I don't think about salad the same way normal people do. I've even started eating it for breakfast. You can read more about this obsession on my food and farm blog, Farmgirl Fare, in a post called On Loving Lettuce.

Lettuce was one of the few things I managed to plant on time this year, and am I glad I did. It's an iffy spring crop in southern Missouri. We usually have at least a few days in the 90s in April—which in itself can be enough to ruin your crop—and it's always a toss up as to whether May will behave itself and stay mild or jump headfirst into summer. This year it behaved, and I harvested gorgeous lettuce every day for weeks.

Today I enjoyed the last of my stash in the fridge, and my salads will now be lettuceless at least until early fall. But if you live in a place where summers are mild (oh how I envy you!), it's not too late to plant, and growing your own lettuce from seed is easier than you might think.

Merveille de Quatre Saisons Lettuce on May 8th

You can tuck a little lettuce almost anywhere, even in spots that are mostly shaded. The only pests that touch the lettuce in my organic kitchen garden are ravaging rabbits. If slugs or snails are a problem in your area, a sprinkling of diatomaceous earth on and around the plants should take care of them.

Diatomaceous earth is an all-natural pesticide made of finely ground fossils of prehistoric freshwater diatoms and can be used indoors and out to kill all kinds of creeping and crawling insects. We buy food grade diatomaceous earth in 50-pound bags and feed it to our livestock (and even the dogs) as a natural wormer.

Don’t have a 'real' garden? Lettuce will happily grow in containers, and since it doesn’t require two feet of soil depth, something short and wide is ideal, such as a plastic dish tub or one of the large plastic bus tubs restaurants use to hold dirty dishes.

For years my lettuce planting schedule went like this: start numerous little flats of seeds in mid-winter, only get around to transplanting a small fraction of the tiny seedlings into individual plugs, then only get around to transplanting a small fraction of those into the garden.

I now take a much lazier approach—and end up with a much bigger harvest.

Simply scatter your seeds onto some nice dirt (compost and manure are excellent soil amendments), then sprinkle them with a light layer of soil or compost, barely covering them. Water well, then sit back and wait, daydreaming of the beautiful bounty you are bringing to life.

You can begin harvesting after only a few weeks—just snip what you need with scissors and leave the plants to continue growing. What I've started doing is sowing the seeds very thickly (which virtually eliminates weeds), then as soon as the plants have a few bite-sized leaves I start to thin them out. And I just keep thinning.

I reach in, pluck out a few of the crowded plants from several different spots, and I swear by the next day the remaining plants have already taken over the empty spaces. You can see in this photo how big the plants with more space have already become.

Newly Planted Lettuce Bed On March 21st

One of the best things about growing lettuce from seed is that there are dozens of varieties available. While the phrase 'picture pefect' rarely applies to my garden unless I’m daydreaming, I did do some aesthetically pleasing, taste-test planting this year.

I divided a 4' x 8' raised bed into eight squares and planted a different type of heat tolerant, slow-to-bolt lettuce in each. I separated the squares with rows of French Breakfast and Easter Egg radishes, which are easy to grow and ready in under a month—just be sure to thin the young seedlings so the rest will have enough room to mature.

Apart from the Red Deer's Tongue, a loose head bib type variety believed to have originated in the mid 16th century, that was a no-show, my experiment was an eye-pleasing, tasty success. The other varieties I planted were Buttercrunch, which I adore; Gentilina, an Italian variety with bright green, frizzled, leafy heads; Jericho, a crisp, sweet cos type bred for the deserts of Israel and pictured at the top of this post; New Red Fire, which has deep red frilly leaves and is extremely slow to bolt; Merveille de Quatre Saisons, a reddish green bibb type; Tom Thumb, which produces a 6" to 7" dark green butterhead in 47 days; and Winter Density, a compact 8" Romaine with thick dark green leaves full of flavor.

Can’t make up your mind which kind of lettuce to plant? Packets of salad mixes are the way to go. I’ve been growing the Rocky Top Lettuce Blend from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds for years.

Pictured here is a 4' x 8' raised bed of Baker Creek’s European Mesclun Mix I planted in late March that went gangbusters (the closeup photo further up is of this same bed). The Baker Creek catalog says this colorful mix, which includes lettuce, radicchio, arugula, endive, orach, mizuna, kale, mustard, and corn salad, is a favorite with market growers and has flavors that range from sweet-mild to sour-hot-tangy. Talk about some truly gorgeous salads.

Another easy to grow from seed heirloom variety of lettuce I like is Freckles, which you can read more about here.

The main thing to remember when growing lettuce is that heat is its bitter enemy— literally. Even a few days in the upper 80s or 90s can have your whole crop tasting terrible. This is very, very depressing.

If you’re growing in containers, you can move them in and out of the sun. Put large, heavy pots on wheeled bases for effortless rearranging—a trick I learned from my friend Cookiecrumb, who successfully grows containers of tomatoes on a small condo patio by rolling them into the sun.

On the other end of the thermometer, lettuce is quite cold hardy and can survive light frosts. I’ve had uncovered lettuce subjected to 24 degrees, and it thawed out just fine once the sun hit it. Floating row cover is wonderful stuff that will give you about 5 degrees of protection, while still allowing light and rain to penetrate. If you treat it well, it can last for years. An old bedsheet draped over your plants is another easy way to protect them.

So what are you waiting for? Sow some seeds today, and you’ll be harvesting glorious green bounty in less than a month. Just make sure you plant enough—I’m sure I can’t be the only lettuce overeater out there.

—The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible, 10th Anniversary Edition by Ed Smith. This has been my favorite gardening book for the past 7 11 years, and I highly recommend it for kitchen gardeners of all levels, especially beginners. It's full of wonderful tips and is always the first book I turn to when I have a garden question.

—Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, a wonderful family owned company located here in Missouri, sells over two dozen varieties of lettuce in packets of 700 seeds for $1.25 to $1.50 each. Salad blend packets contain 1,200 seeds and cost $2.50. I’ve been buying seeds from them for years. They offer over 1,000 types of non-hybrid, non-GMO, non-treated, non-patented and often very rare seeds from all over the world.

—Pinetree Garden Seeds in Maine is another company I’ve been ordering from for years. They specialize in smaller packets of seeds for the backyard gardener and offer many varieties of lettuce seeds, including a few of their own special mixes. Packets of 500 seeds sell for just 65 to 95 cents each. They also sell all kinds of reasonably priced garden & kitchen tools and gadgets.

Ooooo, I love mesclun. Lettuce is one of the things I've never had trouble with growing - it's keeping up with it that runs me ragged. I think I tend to plant too much. But summer salad greens are one of life's simpleest and most beautiful pleasures.

I had a good lettuce year also, cooler than normal temps extended the harvest. Experimenting this year with a shade cloth, but now that we are into the 90's I think we will be having coleslaw instead. :-)

lettuce from one's own garden mmm mmm mmm . . . nothing like it - even plain ole leaf lettuce is so tastymy personal favourite is arugula also known as Roquette or Rocket Salad. marvelous nutty tasting stuff - could go for all arugula all the time

I've just found your blog and am thoroughly enjoying reading all your new posts and combing through your old ones. I have a garden this summer, for the first time since I was a kid, and hav been getting so many great ideas from your entries!

This will be my first year planting lettuce. since I'm in florida and it goes from hot to hotter and back to hot, I think I'm going to start it indoors where it's always 70 degrees and then move it outside for some light shade. I'm told it can be done!

I already see the bunnies in the back yard with a gleam in their little beady eyes!

The lettuce looks very healthy and delicious in your garden. I am a health food freak and love vegetables (may go vegetarian one day) and must add that growing vegetables is one of the hardest things to do. Of course, it is especially difficult here in Singapore, when I live in a high-rise apartment without a garden.

Oh man. You've inspired me. Even in humidity-stricken New York. I need lettuce and have two pots on my terrace going begging: I concentrated on herbs, as far as my edible planting go, with flatleaf parsey growing in a galanized bath - I eat it all the tim as salad.

Hello, I stumbled upon your site and am in awe! you make this look so easy i think I could do it. I was looking for suggestions of some sort, I have recently become interested in starting a home garden AND recently new to Phoenix AZ I am looking for some help in finding what would grow best in my climate, know any websites?

I ran across this post while I was searching for even more advice on growing lettuce. I was doing my usual overthinking, which has caused me to talk myself out of trying to plant vegetables for years. After reading your post, I decided to throw caution to the wind and just plant the blasted lettuce seeds! If they don't grow, I can always try again, right?

Your blogs have convinced me to finally order from BCHS! As a matter of fact, I received my order today that includes the rocky top and European mesclun mixes. I can't wait to have a delicious plateful of these :)

You may be able to grow salad greens all winter. I live in Southern Maryland and received a small hoophouse for Christmas. I had spinach and salad greens barely surviving under a plastic row cover. When I place the hoophouse over them, they started growing very well. My family has been enjoying spinach and mesclun salads as well as cooked spinach for months. Now it is may and we disassembled the hoop house. Sometime late summer or early fall, I plan to replant the beds that will be under the hoop house and hope to have salad nearly all winter.

I put a few lettuce plants into pots a few weeks ago and am AMAZED at having a little bit of lettuce to harvest every day! Do you think I could still plant seeds? My pots get lots of sun, I figure it can't hurt, you think?

Hi Alanna,Congratulations on your harvest! Isn't homegrown lettuce the best? It's a little late to plant seeds here in Missouri, but you could certainly try it.

If you're going to sow them in pots, I would put the pots indoors where it's warmer, so the seeds will have a better chance of germinating and/or germinate faster, then move them outdoors. If the pots aren't really big and heavy, on really cold nights you could also bring them inside. Otherwise, throw an old sheet or some row cover over them to protect them from frost. We've already had a 24 degree morning.

The lettuce I sowed at the end of August got a much better start than the seeds I planted in September. Lettuce does well in cool weather, but you do need some warmth to get that first growth spurt.

Your blog has inspired me to start up my own lettuce garden! As a lover of all things home grown, I can't wait to try this out and share it with the family. You have taken amazing images of your healthy and green garden.

Food grade diatomaceous earth is such a useful thing to have around. We also use it around our coop and chickens and as long as you are careful not to breathe it in (as you have to be with any kind of dust based product) it seems to have so many good uses.

March 2013 update: My apologies for the inconvenience - I know word verification is a pain - but I've had to turn it on to help stop the ridiculous number of anonymous spam comments I've been getting every day. Thanks for your understanding.

Welcome to InMyKitchenGarden.com! Thanks so much for taking the time to write. While I'm not always able to reply to every comment, I receive and enjoy reading them all.

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